


It Had to Have Been the Wine

by hpleems



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Marauders, Marauders' Era, Romance, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 08:17:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13337133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hpleems/pseuds/hpleems
Summary: Remus wakes up after James and Lily's wedding with a terrible hangover and a certain black-haired man in his bed. What were they thinking?





	It Had to Have Been the Wine

Remus awoke to sunlight streaming in through his bedroom window and a headache that threatened to split his head in two. It was way too bright in this room, and he'd had way, way too much to drink at James and Lily's wedding the night before.

He opened his eyes, feeling altogether too warm and sweaty and crowded in his bed, and that's when he realized that he wasn't alone.

He sat up, and saw a head of tangled black hair on the pillow next to him.

_Oh._

It was _Sirius_. Remus felt as though he might vomit, and he wasn't sure if it was from regret or surprise or this bloody hangover or some other ailment he hadn't yet considered. He had come home from James and Lily's wedding with Sirius Black. And he definitely was not wearing a shirt, Remus thought, noting his friend's bare, muscled arms stretched out over his head. And if Remus's memory—which was slowly coming back in mortifying bits and pieces—served him right, Sirius wasn't wearing anything else, either.

Remus's breath caught in his throat, and he slipped carefully out of bed, leaving Sirius snoring peacefully on his pillow. He didn't know what to do. He certainly couldn't _leave_ ; this was his apartment, after all. And yet staying here to see what Sirius would have to say about the events of the night before seemed utterly unbearable. Funny how the thing he'd been hoping for forever had finally happened and now all he felt was dread.

He went into the bathroom and ran a hot shower, washing away the sweat and cigarette smoke and Merlin knew what else was still clinging to his body from the night before. For a brief instant, he imagined Sirius waking up in the next room and coming into the bathroom, pulling back the shower curtain, stepping inside with him, and— _no_. Remus splashed water on his face and forced that thought out of his mind. He very rarely allowed himself to fantasize about Sirius, and now was not the time. He focused on his anxiety in order to quell his arousal.

What the hell had he been thinking last night?

It was the wine; it had to have been the wine. Otherwise he never would have listened when Marlene told him to pursue Sirius. He never would have pulled down the walls he'd carefully built up over the years, walls that carefully shielded all of them from the attraction he'd always felt for his best friend.

He'd been dancing with Marlene after his fourth or fifth glass of wine, a hazy, pleasant sort of feeling beginning to cloud his judgment. The day had been so bloody sentimental; James tearing up when he said his vows, Lily looking at him so fondly with her hand resting on her swollen belly. Peter, laughing with Frank Longbottom and the Prewetts...Sirius, drunk on champagne before the ceremony was even over...Sirius, dancing with anyone and everyone, his grin never leaving his handsome face….Remus was usually so careful, but last night he hadn't even been aware that he was staring at his friend.

Merlin, he thought now, standing in the hot shower. How many other people had seen?

" _You_ could dance with him, you know," Marlene had teased as she and Remus swayed tipsily on the dance floor. "Instead of just watching him dance with everyone else."

"I—that's—what do you mean?" Remus sputtered at her. He could feel his cheeks, already red from the wine, grow even warmer. And yet he turned to look at Sirius again, just in time to see him leave the room, presumably to go have a smoke.

"Go after him," Marlene said with a giggle. "Go on, I'll dance with Peter." Remus had frowned at her, but when the song ended he did follow Sirius outside, stumbling a bit as he approached his friend out in the garden.

"Watch out Moony," Sirius said, reaching out to steady Remus with his free hand. He took a long, slow drag of his cigarette with the other. "Been sampling the wine, have you?"

"Ah, maybe a bit," Remus admitted, vaguely aware that he was slurring his words and much, much more aware that Sirius looked hot as hell in his dress robes. At Lily's insistence, Sirius's long, dark hair was pulled back with a ribbon, and Remus admired his friend's handsome face, fighting the urge to trace a finger along his jawline, to cup his hand around the back of Sirius's head and lean down and...

He remembered thinking what a bad idea it was to be talking to Sirius alone when they were this drunk. Yet when Sirius offered him the cigarette he took it, leaning in so their arms were pressed against each other, close enough that he could feel Sirius's breath on his neck. He took a drag of the cigarette and passed it back, his head swimming. Sirius was talking, saying things about James being married and Lily's pregnancy and Merlin knew what else, but Remus was only thinking about Sirius's breath on his neck, Sirius's lips on that cigarette, Sirius—

"Moony?" Sirius had said, looking up at him. "Are you all right?"

It was mortifying to think about what had happened next.

Remus had lurched forward and kissed Sirius on the mouth.

Sirius had kissed him back, though. Not at first; at first he'd stepped back in surprise, and then he tossed his cigarette on the ground, stamping it out before grasping Remus's chin in his hand and kissing him back, messily, eagerly, as if it wasn't strange or improper at all for the two of them to be doing this. Shocked, Remus clung desperately to him, absorbed by the feeling of Sirius's lips on his, Sirius's tongue in his mouth. And then Sirius pulled away again, leaving Remus confused, embarrassed, and painfully aroused.

"Let's say goodbye to James and go back to your place," Sirius had said imploringly, and Remus went along with it because he always went along with what Sirius wanted to do. And, of course, because he was utterly trashed and he'd wanted it too.

Remus turned the shower off, feeling only marginally better. Despite the kiss and what had happened afterwards—and a _lot_ had happened afterward—he harbored no illusions about what this had really been about. Sirius was notorious for drunken hookups, and they'd both had quite a lot to drink.

And Remus had kissed him first.

His face burned with embarrassment, and as he stepped out of the shower, he steeled himself for the inevitable. Sirius would wake up and saunter down the hallway in some state of undress. He'd make a snide remark about how he'd fucked a werewolf the night before, and Remus would laugh and make lunch and they'd pretend their hookup had been no big deal. Or rather, Remus would pretend. For Sirius, it would be true. And it would never happen again.

He supposed he ought to be grateful that Sirius would let him off the hook so easily. Remus pulled on a pair of pants and opened the bathroom door, running his hands through his wet hair.

He stopped short when he saw Sirius sitting at the kitchen table with a pot of tea, looking rumpled and exhausted in a rather endearing way.

"Oh," Remus flushed in surprise. "Hi. I—er—thought you'd be asleep for a while yet."

"No such luck," Sirius said with a grimace. He pushed a bottle of hangover potion across the table toward Remus. "I found this in the cupboard. Hope you don't mind that I helped myself."

"I wouldn't expect anything less," Remus said, opening the bottle and taking a few swigs. It was a foul-tasting thing, hangover potion, but it did the trick. He felt his headache clear up almost immediately. "I didn't even know I had this."

He glanced at Sirius, who was wearing nothing but his dress pants from the night before, his chest bare in the morning light. For a moment, he caught Remus's eye with an expression that Remus couldn't quite read—regret? Uncertainty? Or something worse?

Remus looked away, his ears red. He wanted to suggest that they both go put shirts on, but then he'd be admitting just how awkward he found this whole damn thing. _Act casually_ , he told himself. _What happened last night was no big deal._

Like hell it was. He grabbed a package of stale muffins and tossed them on the table. "Sorry. I don't have much food around here."

"It's fine," Sirius said shortly. "I'm not exactly hungry anyway." Remus nodded and sat down beside him, unsure what to say. He'd hoped that Sirius would take the lead, but Sirius was oddly quiet, looking down at his hands as if he did not know what to say. Remus couldn't stand the silence.

"Did you hear if it's supposed to rain today?" he asked in a strained voice. "I heard we're supposed to get a few inches of rain, or maybe it was fog, or maybe—" He trailed off; Sirius was staring at him with a look of incredulity on his face.

"Moony. You kissed me last night at James' wedding and slept with me _in your bed_ and you're really going to make small talk about the bloody _weather_? Or are we pretending that this didn't happen?"

Remus's face flushed. "Hard to pretend it didn't happen when you're sitting here in my kitchen wearing yesterday's trousers," he snapped. He felt a sudden flare of irritation at Sirius for being so dense. How could he not know exactly why Remus didn't want to talk about this? After all this time? "You kissed me back, didn't you?"

"I did." Sirius wet his lips, looking almost nervous. "And then some, if I recall correctly. And I liked it. Did you?"

Remus stared at him. Whether or not they'd liked it seemed beside the point. In fact, it seemed rather embarrassingly obvious that they'd enjoyed themselves, he thought, pushing certain images out of his mind. "Of course I liked it. What are you getting at, Padfoot?"

"I don't know." Sirius frowned. "Never mind, then. We hooked up at a wedding. Lots of people do. I mean, I saw you dancing with Marlene. If you'd woken up in _her_ bed this morning you'd have thought nothing of it."

Remus laughed in spite of himself. This was more along the lines of what he'd expected from Sirius, but there was still a bit of disappointment tinged with his relief. "You have a very skewed view of my sex life if you think it's no big deal for me to be waking up in my friends' beds. That's your thing, not mine."

"Fine, Moony. Whatever. But you know what I mean, don't you? We can pretend this never happened, or—" He paused, looking at Remus, that unreadable expression back on his face.

"Or what?"

"Or you can tell me why you kissed me in the first place." Sirius folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. This was the Sirius that Remus knew: confident and arrogant and fully aware that he had the upper hand. This, he thought with mild irritation, was the Sirius he loved.

"What if there's no reason?" Remus said, trying to sound casual and cool, two things that he had never been in his life. "What if I was drunk and impulsive and caught up in some sort of wedding sentimentality?" It was true, Remus thought grimly. But it wasn't the full truth.

"Then say so," said Sirius, a hard, desperate edge creeping into his voice. Remus looked up at him in surprise; Sirius's confidence suddenly seemed to have dissipated. "Then tell me that that's all it was, Moony, because otherwise…otherwise I—" His voice trailed off, and Remus stared at him. If Remus was ever going to tell Sirius the truth, he thought, now was the time.

"Fuck it," he said softly, and Sirius looked up, startled. "I've got enough secrets, haven't I, Padfoot?" Remus had imagined this conversation hundreds of times, but now he couldn't think of anything to say except for the truth. "Sirius, I kissed you last night because I wanted to," he said in a rush. "I—I've been wanting to kiss you for a very long time."

His words hung in the air between them for one, long, excruciating moment. And then Sirius leaned forward and cupped Remus's face in his hands the way he had the night before, except this time, his kiss was long and gentle and slow, and Remus knew exactly what it meant.

"Shit, Moony," Sirius breathed when the finally pulled apart. "If I had known...we could have been doing this for _years_."

"You mean you want this too?" Remus said quickly. He had to know for sure. "I mean, you don't just want a hookup, but—"

Sirius stared at him incredulously. "Merlin, Moony. Are you dense? I want _you_."

"I should have said something," Remus said, his heart pounding. "I was terrified you'd find out." He leaned forward and kissed Sirius again, tentatively, almost to be sure that the first time was real. But Sirius kissed him back. And this time, neither of them was drunk.

"Me too," said Sirius. "I've wanted this for so bloody long. But I didn't want to ruin things." He gestured between them. "You know, us. The Marauders."

"Fortunately I had no problem with that," Remus said, swallowing hard. He'd never imagined that this would be the end result of the events of the last twelve hours. "I can't believe I kissed you at James' wedding."

Sirius laughed. "Well I'm very shocked and glad that you did." 

Remus exhaled heavily. "We have a lot of time to make up for," he said softly.

"I look forward to it," said Sirius. He leaned forward and kissed Remus on the mouth. "Come on, Moony. I have a lot of things I'd like to do with you. _To_ you. But first, I'm taking you out for lunch."


End file.
